I've been in Toronto for 18 hours and I want you to come for dinner. Like, now.

Hey all,
I'm home. Or in someone else's home in my adopted home town. It feels bizarrely familiar. I could *swear* I just left for the weekend. It's been less than 24 hours since I got in from NYC (and my awesomely awesome birthday with Loralee) but nothing seems out of place. I can navigate the transit system with one eye open (thx to Roxanna for the bus station pick up and escort home!), the prices are all what they should be ($1 for water, not $3) and the bank tellers are unreasonably perky. Yep. It's Canada.

I did cycle on the wrong side of the road twice this morning and was a bit amazed by Canadian money but otherwise, same-same. I'm staying in the apartment of a special-friend who is away right now. How perfect. I spend 18 months totally working through longing only to come home and sleep in the bed of someone who's smell makes me a bit achey. Of course! It's so delightful though. I rode down King st West today and yelled out "I love it here!" to the street.

I'm totally overwhelmed with all the stuff I have to take care of while I'm here and that mostly makes me want to curl up in bed and disappear into a book. So I might be a little slack in getting back to you. I would however, love my TO friends to come join me for dinner this Wednesday night, say 7 ish. 28 Temple St (2 blocks south of King, west of Dufferin). Bring whatever, something to share. I'll make a big soup or somethin'.

Toronto lives inside me. When I would cycle around Sydney I was constantly mis-guessing how long things would take. Of course, I just hadn't been there long enough and so the city wasn't engraved on my heart. Toronto is. I have a memory of each and every neighborhood. Today I cycled about five blocks and in that time, I went by a pub where a friend propositioned me one cold winter night. The apartment of an old colleague who gave me a bag of apples the last time I saw her. The apartment where a friend took me to lie down after I got dizzy from wine during dinner. I discovered this friend was genius at silence. We lay there for an hour, not speaking.

I like the fact that I know where to find things. I like the sun today. I like this heatbox of an attic apartment. I like dialing local. I like that I'm about to hop on a fixy, cycle down one of my most storied streets and go meet a cherished ex in the very neighborhood where we fell in love. I'm sentimental and getting to indulge in my sentiment every minute of the day is delicious.

I love being here but I'm also glad it's relatively brief--I leave in mid-July for 4 months in San Francisco. I need a slow re-introduction to my life here. It was hard to leave and I packed away alot of my love for it/you. I'm kind of wary about staying again because...because it feels like a bloody marriage. I've been married to TO for over 13 years. My whole adult life. And in that time, I'd never left for more than two weeks at a time! For the first time, I left to go have flings with other cities and communities and now Toronto is looking at me asking: So Chanelle, are we going to make this real or what? I'm not saying that you can't go away whenever you want. It's not that. You can have all the freedom you need. I just need know: will you be with me for the long haul? Will I be the one you come home to?

And I don't want to answer because, well I can't commit yet! I'm looking at the life I had--was that gonna be it? Is this what I want from my life? I come back here and I start to do the exact same kinds of things I did before I left. I want to organize saucy anti-racist feminist cultural events, build radical networks and community, have friends over, picnic in the sun, write, theorize, bake, bike, advance the ho and homosexual agenda. Make the world more awesome and less cruel, without going crazy in the process. I have traded dating in for meditation but otherwise, I am the same girl I always was. And guess what? I still have the same question I left with: Is this the life I want?

I don't know if I can settle down again till I can answer that. Or maybe I'll be a terminally indecisive Gemini, return and wake up every godamned morning asking that question until I die. (and that's the problem. Death, I mean. It is my fear of it that sparks all this angst). I'm hoping I get to wake up and know that I'm living the right life. Experimenting with everything in my life has been one good way to explore that question. So is silence and stillness. Speaking of which....time for meditation. Hope to see you Wednesday.

yours,
cg